


Ways of Saying

by die_traumerei



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, Other, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23915440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/die_traumerei/pseuds/die_traumerei
Summary: Inspired by a list of alternative ways to say 'I love you', specifically 'I want you to have this'.Aziraphale gives Crowley a locket, but forbids him to look at it until he comes back from the bodyswap. When they both return, and Crowley opens the locket, some secrets are revealed.(The secret is that Aziraphale loves Crowley. It's not actually very secret.)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 198





	Ways of Saying

“I want you to have this,” Aziraphale said, pressing something small and hard into Crowley's hand.

“Wha?” Crowley looked down to see a locket, pretty and plain and silver, a single forget-me-not etched onto one side. He went to touch the tiny release, but Aziraphale's hand covered his.

“No, not yet. Please.” He watched Aziraphale swallow, and clear his throat. “Don't look at it until we're back.” He cleared his throat again. “Or you're back.”

“You're coming back too!” Crowley said, fierce and with a flame in his chest. For all that he'd miracled the soot and burns and everything away, he still felt the bookshop on fire under his skin. He wondered if he'd feel it in Aziraphale's body, too.

“I certainly hope so, dear boy.” Aziraphale smiled, a sickly thing. “But if I don't. I want you to...well, you'll see.”

“We'll see together, yeah angel? I won't open it 'til you're back _with me_ , and we've switched back.” Crowley said.

“No,” Aziraphale said, firm. Forgetting he had to be afraid or cautious, because he was never like that around Crowley. Because while Crowley might do ninety in London and push the angel to question and also all right maybe he'd sent him to that rather unfortunate curse in Hemel Hempstead that one time but Aziraphale was _fine_ , totally fine after a few healing miracles. All of that _aside_ , Crowley would delete himself from the universe before he hurt Aziraphale, and that was that. So it was that an angel who was terribly nervous around his own kind could be firm with Crowley.

“What d'you mean no?” Crowley protested.

“No. Promise me, Crowley. If I don't make it back – and, just for the record, I rather hope I do – you'll open the locket.” His voice suddenly softened. “I've worn it every day for over two hundred years. Please. If something happens to me, you must promise to open it.”

Maybe the angel had some kind of miracle in there. A piece of his soul. Some way to cheat death.

“I promise,” Crowley said. “Look, I promise, and did I ever break a promise to you?”

Aziraphale's lips twitched. “You promised that Hemel Hempstead would be an easy one.”

“Which it should have been based on the information I'd been given!” Crowley protested. “There was hardly a scratch on you.”

Aziraphale gave him a lugubrious look, but Crowley stuck to his guns. Aziraphale had been  _fine_ . Even after the geese had showed up.

“I promise it for real,” he said. “Just. You know. Be rather nice if you came back too. Y'know. I'd like my body back.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, like he believed Crowley. They needed to tell themselves lies to get through right now, but Crowley sort of hoped that the angel didn't believe him. Not about wanting his body back.

(He would live for the rest of time in Aziraphale's corporation, if it just meant the angel was all right.)

“Right! Well.” Crowley set the locket carefully on his desk, coiling the fine silver chain around it. “See, nice and safe and sound here, all ready for when _we_ come back.”

Aziraphale smiled and opened the small box next to where the locket now lay. He was sat on the great throne, while Crowley lounged on the desk, one foot propped against one of the chair's armrests. He helped himself to one of the chocolate caramels that Crowley always kept in the little box, in case of emergencies. A tiny treat, before they had to do the things that needed doing.

“Right then,” he said, and held out his hand. “They won't linger much more.”

“Right, yeah.” Crowley clasped his hand around Aziraphale's, and they let their essences flow, move, detach from their corporations and ah! There.

Crowley blinked and immediately slumped a bit more in the chair. He stretched, and tested out the boundaries of this new corporation. The taste of sweet still in his mouth – in Aziraphale's mouth – well, whatever. A different centre of gravity, weight in different places, a softness about the body, and looser clothes.

He smiled, watching his own body, spine oddly straight. Aziraphale was running his tongue over his teeth – Crowley's teeth, and had a similar look of curious concentration on his face.

“All right?” Oh, his voice was funny, in those plummy tones, and he watched his own face smile.

“All right,” Aziraphale confirmed. 

“Time to act like ourselves, then,” Crowley said, and stood up, preparing to leave. “Meet at the park, usual time?”

“Of course, dear boy.” Aziraphale hopped down from the desk and walked him to his own front door, the perfect gentleman. “Ta-ra, then.”

“See you in a few, angel.” And Crowley took himself off to play the role of the being he knew best in the world.

And then – after.

After the trial, after the Ritz, after the nightingale and after Crowley reunited with his Bentley, after all was said and all was done, they went back.

Back to Mayfair and Crowley's flat and Crowley's wine. Not an old bottle, but one quite new; it seemed apropos. They gave their glasses a few minutes to breathe, then toasted one another and drank deep in celebration.

“Well?” Crowley asked. “It's done. We're switched back. And both made it.”

Aziraphale smiled. “So we did. Both of us back, just as you said.”

“Tolja,” Crowley said, definitely very casually admiring the ruby of his wine in the light. “So. That locket.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.” Crowley thought that this new corporation of Aziraphale's – well, Adam had done a good job, but it did blush _rather_ a lot. More often than before? Crowley thought perhaps. The angel was squeezing his hands together. “Yes,” he said again, and took a deep breath. “I suppose now is a good time.”

Crowley tilted his head to one side. Maybe it  _was_ a piece of Aziraphale's soul, or his heart, or something like that. What else would cause him to get so worrisome? They were their own side now, all that bullshit with Heaven and Hell was over – for a good long time at least, if not forever. But they were free! No more reports. No more being enemies. No more anything. Aziraphale had been so happy over dinner, and Crowley thought this might herald – well, he couldn't imagine the angel with  _no_ anxiety. But less, at least. A measure of peace.

“Cheer up,” he said, taking another drink of wine and setting his glass aside and reaching for the locket. “We survived the end of the world, pretty sure I can handle this.”

“...yes.” Aziraphale looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled, and drank deep from his glass. “I rather think you can, actually.”

Crowley just shook his head and lifted the necklace by its chain, letting the soft silver links run through his fingers, only his index finger hooking it, right where the clasp was. Never one to pass up a bit of drama, he let it twist and flash in the light, then took it with his other hand, and opened the clasp.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, Aziraphale.”

It wasn't his heart, or a piece of his soul. It wasn't a lip-print from a famous actress (or actor), nor a scrap of a lost Sappho poem, or anything like that. 

It was a tiny, perfect painting of Crowley's right eye, precise in every detail.

“ _Angel_.”

Aziraphale bowed his head. “I have worn that every day since the Bastille,” he explained softly.

“Why are you giving it to me now?” Crowley asked, unable to keep out a note of sadness. This was a love-token, even he knew that. Was this the end of things? No, it couldn't be. They were _best friends_ , above and beyond all else. That would always endure.

“I made it because I missed you,” Aziraphale said. “We could go years between seeing each other. But now I see you every day.”

“Is that...a problem?” Crowley asked delicately.

“Oh for goodness' sake! Crowley, I have been in love with you for hundreds, no _thousands_ of years, and now it's safe to love you and I'm trying to tell you that, you idiot!” Aziraphale threw up his hands, then immediately buried his face in them. “Although I certainly wouldn't blame you if you wanted to return it to me. But I don't...need it anymore. I have the real thing.”

“Oh.” Crowley blinked. “I. Uh. I. Yes?” he tried.

“At least you're rubbish at this too,” Aziraphale said. And finished off the wine bottle, splitting it between their two glasses.

“I am not!” Crowley protested. “You didn't do so bloody great, and I just offered you a ride!”

Aziraphale stiffened, and Crowley wondered if for once in all of time and space God would just do him a solid and allow him to simply sink into the earth, discorporating utterly, and perhaps spending a few millennia as a small inclusion somewhere in the earth's core. 

“I'm sorry,” Aziraphale said softly. “I let my fear...” He shook his head and looked up, all sad blue eyes and oh fuck everything. He looked _old_. And _tired_. “Never mind. It's done. Crowley, if you permit me to, I should very much like to spend the rest of my life making up to you every time I've wronged you, or hurt you. I know there's quite a lot, and I'm very lucky you're still speaking to me, but I _am_ rubbish at this so. All I can offer you is – me.” He smiled a little, self-deprecating. “Not much, but I'm your best friend. Can't be so bad as all that.”

“No. I mean yes. But no, you don't...angel, you don't _owe_ me anything,” Crowley tried to explain. “Or maybe we owe each other. I don't really care.” He held out his hand. “You are more than enough, Aziraphale. You always have been. And I offer...me...in return. If you'll have me.”

Aziraphale's smile trembled. “With such happiness, my dear boy.” He took Crowley's hand and kissed the backs of his fingers, and Crowley shivered. He had the locket clutched in his other hand, the metal hot now from his skin.

“Be easy,” Aziraphale murmured, and smiled, inviting him in on the joke. “We'll muddle through. We always have, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Crowley cleared his throat, and stood. He laid the locket down on his desk, as careful as can be. The silver was polished – from lying against his angel's skin, from being worn every day. Crowley's glasses were already off and he was glad of it as he cupped Aziraphale's face in his hands and, very carefully, kissed him for the first of many times.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> dietraumerei.tumblr.com


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